


The Problem With Sharing Hostel Rooms With Couples

by Wallwalker



Category: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Genre: F/M, Flying, Multi, Pre-OT3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:14:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28792995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wallwalker/pseuds/Wallwalker
Summary: Arthur and Fenchurch are at it again. Ford is annoyed. (Set before Mostly Harmless.)
Relationships: Arthur Dent/Fenchurch, Arthur Dent/Fenchurch/Ford Prefect
Kudos: 3





	The Problem With Sharing Hostel Rooms With Couples

They were at it again.

This, predictably, was Ford's first reaction to waking up in the middle of the night in a terrible hostel on some tiny planetoid and finding himself alone in the little room, lying on the floor and actually not listening to Arthur's horrid snoring. Seeing the window open to the blank red sky was another dead giveaway. Why they couldn't use the door like civilized people, Ford would never understand. 

They just had to show off that they knew how to fly. Every night. They couldn't just... keep him awake the usual way, the way Zaphod had during his various trysts, with the giggling and the desperate attempts to be quiet that never, ever worked well enough. Maybe they thought they were being considerate, but they hadn't asked him that, now, had they? He would've appreciated that much consideration.

He threw the pile of hotel towels aside and got up long enough to shut and lock the window; he wanted to do it while the fit of pique was still quite fresh. They'd been out flying every night since they'd arrived, and he was starting to get sick of it. With any luck, they didn't have a key between them and would have to spend the night outside - it would serve them right. 

Then again, if they were doing what he strongly suspected they were doing, they might not even notice that they were locked out for a while. But he was trying not to think about that too hard.

Things hadn't worked out as he'd planned. He'd hoped that when he'd gone back to Earth he'd find Arthur again, being exactly the same way as he'd been for the first few decades of his life, and that he'd convince him to leave Earth with him and have a good time. He hadn't expected him to be with a girl at all - the prospect of his incredibly dull best friend having found feminine companionship still floored him - and he certainly hadn't expected that girl to have already convinced him to leave Earth again, thus leaving Ford with very little to do on Earth that was even remotely challenging.

Ford had nothing against Fenchurch, really. She just happened to be the sort of girl he would've crossed the room to avoid at parties. If he'd started babbling to her at a bar about green flying saucers, she probably would've taken it in stride; worse, she might've actually believed him. As much as the Earthling tendency to ask the same questions over and over irritated him at times, he had to admit that he found it charmingly alien. Fenchurch lacked that endearing quality. 

Come to think of it, Trillian had been the same way - he had no idea what Zaphod had been thinking, the poor old bastard. For some reason most of the Earthlings that he'd met with that undesirable sort of personality had been women. There was probably something in that, something about the war between the sexes, but Ford preferred to stay out of those sorts of arguments, so he kept the idea to himself.

Still, despite her annoying open-mindedness, Fenchurch was fond of Arthur; Ford could understand that much. He was also _fond_ of Arthur, according to some obscure definition of the word that was usually not found in dictionaries, but that he understood well enough. Fond enough that he'd decided to stay with Arthur while he did his research for the new edition of the Guide when he could've gone off on his own. For that matter, he could've gone off to find Zaphod, to try to talk him out of starting that family with Trillian. Or had Zaphod already started it? He couldn't remember; he hadn't seen his semicousin in a very long time. 

It wasn't her, or them, that was gnawing at him. It was the whole flying thing that was so easy for them that they could go out and do it almost every single night, on every planet they'd visited. And the fact that Ford had tried so damn hard to get the knack, and he'd failed miserably. He'd ruined a perfectly good pair of pants and had nearly lost one of his favorite towels, throwing himself off of anything and everything in the hopes that if he just found the right ledge, he could find something sufficiently distracting near the bottom to keep himself from hitting the ground. Trouble was that he was far too easily distracted, odd as it was. He was easily distracted and therefore couldn't manage to distract himself when he actually wanted to. Earthlings, on the other hand, were so steady in their ignorance that distracting them was easy. Or so he told himself, when he needed a reason to feel better about his failure so that he could sleep at night. Which was often. 

He shook his head and crawled back into his makeshift towel-bed - Arthur had offered to find him a cot or something, but Ford had balked at that. What was the point of sleeping in a hotel room if you couldn't rough it a bit? He needed sleep, and sitting there brooding wasn't going to help anything.

Later, just as he was about to fall asleep, the thought crossed his mind that maybe Arthur would teach him if he ever asked, or Fenchurch; Arthur was very vocally his best friend, and despite Ford's own trepidation Fenchurch seemed to like him well enough. Or both of them, together. The two of them on either side of him, pressed between them so that if he didn't get the knack they could at least keep him from ruining another towel - apparently that was all they were each wearing in this particular thought, possibly because Ford had mentioned the pants. Both of them holding one of his hands, speaking softly in his ears. Very encouraging. Very distracting. Very... very _close_ -

His eyes snapped open. It was as much the intrusive fantasy as it was the sound of the lock softly clicking open. So they'd taken a key, he thought sourly. They were learning. 

He squeezed them shut again and tried his best to look asleep as the two crept back in, giggling softly to themselves. He could hear armfuls of clothing dragging the floor and resisted the urge to open his eyes, then wondered where the urge had come from in the first place. 

"Shhh," Fenchurch finally whispered, "stop that, Arthur! Ford's asleep!" 

"I know, I know... trust me, he can sleep through anything," he heard Arthur whisper back. 

"Still, we ought to be considerate." He heard them crawl back into bed, then the inane rustling of clothing coming back on under the covers. "You know, I never asked – did he teach you how to do this? He's an alien, after all -"

"He's from somewhere around Betelgeuse," Arthur corrects her, "we're as alien to him as he is to us -" 

They certainly were, Ford thought. 

"- and no," he continued, "I figured it out. As far as I know he doesn't know how." 

"That's too bad." Fenchurch yawned, and he could hear the rustling stop, the two of them settling down. "Do you think we could show him how, someday?" 

His eyes snapped open again. Fortunately he was facing away from the bed, so all he could see was the dirty carpet under his towels and the cracked plaster on the wall. 

"Er. We could offer." Arthur yawned - Earthlings certainly did yawn a lot. "I doubt he'd agree to it." 

"We should think about it. Wouldn't hurt to ask." 

The two went quiet after that, until the snoring began, and that should've put Ford right to sleep. But – for reasons he couldn't articulate even in his own mind – he ended up staring at that crack in the plaster for what felt like eternity before he could doze off again.

**Author's Note:**

> Something I started writing a very very long time ago, found, and decided to finish. I am incredibly rusty on this and need to re-read, so we'll see how it goes.


End file.
